Michele the Moron Strikes Again

Here’s what she told Sean Hannity after the Supreme Court’s last day of oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act (emphasis is in the original):

One argument that the government was trying to make is that somehow health care is uniquely different. That government can regulate it because everyone participates. Health insurance is not uniquely different. It’s still an opportunity that some people choose to engage in, but 40 million people do not. And the premise was made that people don’t buy insurance because they can’t afford it. That’s not true. There are people who just decide they want to roll the dice and take their chances that they won’t need insurance.

Think Progress has the video.

Rush Apologizes (Sort Of — For Him, This Is an Abject Apology)

WOW. Hell freezes over, pigs fly, and shut the front door, can you believe this?

Santorum’s Dream America Is a Nightmare Theocracy

First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Even bringing up a President’s “faith,” or a presidential candidate’s “faith,” in the context of a national election campaign — much LESS attacking it, or mischaracterizing it, or lying about it — is outrageous. I know it’s become totally normal and routine for political candidates and elected officials to parade their religious beliefs, and I know it’s impossible — not next to impossible: impossible — for any woman or man to get elected to any public office higher than town council without publicly certifying, at minimum, belief in God. But that does not make it appropriate, or right, to impose religious tests for public office when the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids that. However, it’s only in the past decade or so that we’ve started to see politicians and media pundits openly advocating that law and public policy be based on explicit religious dogma.

“Culture Wars”

The “culture wars” war over who gets to control women’s reproductive organs and whether women have the right to basic preventive health care goes on. and on. and on, and plumbs depths of foolishness hitherto unexplored.

It Was NEVER About Religious Liberty

Politico (emphasis is mine):

More on Contraception Battle

Start with this one, by Jodi Jacobson, at RH Reality Check. Here is a snip:

Freedom of Religion Does Not Mean Imposition of Religion

Here is the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Clueless Fertilized Egg/Zygote/Embryo/Fetus Worshippers

The always immensely amusing Sister Toldjah on Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell’s attempt to attach an amendment to a forced ultrasound bill in that state:

Janet Howell Is My New Hero(ine)

Janet Howell is a state senator in Virginia’s legislature, and today she attached an amendment to a forced ultrasound bill for women seeking abortions that would make a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test mandatory for men before they could get a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

Needless to say, Howell’s amendment was defeated and the bill went on to pass Virginia’s legislature with the ultrasound requirement intact — but it was still a gutsy move on Howell’s part.

The Hypocritical Politics of Moralizing

The New York Times has a superb editorial today about how Republican politicians destroy their own campaigns when their constant pious moralizing at the American public meets up with their own personal behavior. The prime example of that in this campaign is, of course, Newt Gingrich, who continues to insist on imposing a code of morality on the entire country that he refuses to adhere to, himself.